Permaculture's time has come according to Rachel Sullivan in the 
current edition of Ecos magazine published by CSIRO.  The article 
titled "Living culture whose time has come" is available as a .pdf 
download at:
http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=EC144p8.pdf

or a shortened version for online viewing at:
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/features/20080309-17897.html

It's an excellent and very positive piece with some great photos 
including an aerial view of Masdar the new car-free city under 
construction in Abu Dhabi.  You will need to download the .pdf to see 
all the photos and additional boxed content.


The living culture whose time has come
Wednesday, 03 September 2008

By Rachel Sullivan
Essentially a design toolkit aimed at teaching people how to feed 
themselves and live as energy-efficiently as possible, permaculture 
borrows techniques from organic agriculture, sustainable forestry, 
horticulture, agroforestry and indigenous land management systems 
from around the world. Its key design principles, modelled on 
interactions seen in natural ecosystems, are as applicable to 
suburban backyards and ecovillages as they are to rural properties.

The lives of Kalahari Bushmen, Zimbabwean schoolchildren, indigenous 
Brazilians and tsunami-affected Acehnese have all changed for the 
better thanks to permaculture. In Australia, where the concept was 
first articulated, its principles have distantly influenced a range 
of government and private ventures, from the movement to defend your 
home during a bushfire, to Landcare, holistic farm design, award-
winning rangeland cattle properties and more directly, Gawler’s 
inspirational Food Forest.

Yet the permaculture movement has experienced a patchy relationship 
with mainstream environmentalism and the subsequent sustainability 
movement.

Permaculture’s roots
Permaculture One was first published in 1978 by then University of 
Tasmania Professor Bill Mollison and 20-year-old student David 
Holmgren. The concept grew out of a deep concern about the widespread 
use of destructive industrial and agricultural methods that poisoned 
land and water, reduced biodiversity and removed billions of tons of 
soil from previously fertile landscapes.

While the book attracted acclaim in some quarters, it was seen as 
controversial, to say the least, in others. According to Mollison – 
permaculture’s often-outspoken public face – the professional 
community was outraged because the concept combined architecture with 
biology, agriculture with forestry, and forestry with animal 
husbandry, ‘so that almost everybody who considered themselves a 
specialist felt a bit offended’.

Holmgren goes further, saying in his most recent book, Permaculture 
Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, that ‘because the 
concept was conceived in academia, those involved in large-scale 
agriculture and land use saw it as theoretical, utopian and 
impractical because it was difficult to apply within the prevailing 
social, market and policy environment’.

‘It was frustrating because it has good science at its heart,’ says 
the quietly spoken Holmgren who, with his partner Su Dennet, runs a 
permaculture-based design business from their Central Victorian 
property Melliodora – once a degraded wasteland, but today a highly 
productive, resource-efficient property feeding up to 10 people each 
year.

Even now, in the midst of unprecedented interest in sustainability, 
Holmgren believes the movement still attracts criticism in Australia, 
because of his – and Mollison’s – outspoken belief that 
sustainability measures being enacted by government just don’t go far 
enough, or are completely misguided.

‘Real sustainability requires a fundamental rethink about how we 
design and manage the land and plan our towns and cities,’ says 
Holmgren. ‘Greater emphasis needs to be placed on using resources 
efficiently to create a productive and stable living environment.

‘Permaculture is in fact a design system for sustainability. Its 
popularised spread as an alternative lifestyle choice or system of 
organic gardening has been a notable phenomenon in the Australian 
social landscape over the last 30 years, but this very success has 
limited its acceptance as a design system for sustainability.

‘To view permaculture purely as a means of achieving household 
selfsufficiency by sustainable means is to grossly understate its 
scope and objectives,’ Holmgren emphasises.

He is the first to admit that permaculture designs have, in some 
cases, turned out to be naïve, misguided or counterproductive, and 
believes this was partly due to the concept being catapulted too 
quickly into the public domain before the concept could be fully 
developed – similar to the more recent sustainable development 
movement which, Holmgren believes, was also ‘muddled and discredited 
by its rapid projection into the world of intergovernmental policy 
and corporate spin doctors’.

‘Whatever path they follow, ideas have to get dirty in the real world 
outside academia if they are to have life and utility,’ he adds.

The weeds issue
Recently, there has been an upsurge of public interest in 
permaculture, the third such in the past 30 years. This growing 
interest – linked to concerns about oil, political and economic 
uncertainty, longterm drought and climate change – is coming from an 
increasingly mainstream audience.

‘These are people who see the folly of expending more energy to 
produce something (from energy to food crops) than it is inherently 
worth, and are seeking to cut energy consumption all round, in the 
process becoming more self-sufficient,’ says internationally 
recognised permaculture teacher and sustainability consultant, Geoff 
Lawton, from the Permaculture Research Institute.

Permaculture’s detractors include those who argue that the central 
food forest concept’s productivity (see accompanying box) varies 
widely, depending on climate and the garden’s maturity. One of their 
biggest concerns is permaculture’s advocacy of non-native species and 
weeds such as Tagasaste (tree lucerne) – a highly productive 
perennial grown for animal fodder and for its ability to fix soil 
nitrogen.

‘From a permaculture point of view, these [species] are a source of 
abundance that we should be using,’ said Holmgren during the ABC’s 
Landline program in 2004.

‘Take carp, for example. We have shifted our attitude from how do you 
destroy this to how do you use this as a resource (it’s now widely 
used as a liquid fertiliser). Similarly with willow: a lot of the so-
called adverse effects of willows can be managed quite well by 
treating them as a fodder tree.’

Mollison agrees, saying that weeds are simply vegetating damaged 
country. ‘They actually stabilise the situation, then once you can 
shut out the thing causing the damage, the forest can be re-
established and the weeds removed.’

Urban context
Intriguingly, permaculture principles suggest that the most efficient 
way for most people to live in the modern world is in towns and 
villages, where travel can be minimised and food production organised 
cooperatively.

Geoff Lawton has been working as a consultant for the WWF and the 
government of oil-producing Abu Dhabi to design ‘the world’s greenest 
city’ – Masdar City, a new, six-square-kilometre urban development 
that will eventually house 50 000 people and will be accredited as 
zero-carbon, zero-waste and car-free.

The city’s electricity will be generated by photovoltaic panels, 
while cooling will be provided via solar powered evaporative cooling. 
Water will be provided through a solar-powered desalination plant.

Lawton’s involvement focuses on utilising waste streams, and advising 
on urban design to ensure minimal energy demands from the buildings 
and inhabitants. Design features include efficient positioning of 
solar and wind power collectors, and directing waste streams for 
recycling or reuse – to the point of ensuring that systems for 
organic and vermiculture (worm-driven) compost are part of the 
central plan. Landscaped areas in the city and crops in outer areas 
will be irrigated with greywater and treated wastewater.

CEO of the Masdar Initiative, Dr Sultan al Jaber, says that Masdar 
City ‘will question conventional patterns of urban development, and 
set new benchmarks for sustainability and environmentally friendly 
design.’

Holmgren believes that visionary developments like Masdar show that 
permaculture’s influence is affecting every level of the global economy.

‘Whatever they’re called, I believe permaculture’s principles will 
inevitably become mainstream as world oil supplies peak, there is a 
reduction in the amount of energy available, and we are forced to 
redesign our society to consume less energy.’

In the meantime, he says, people can make small-scale adaptive 
changes that will help them focus on doing something positive.

‘In the midst of so much bad news, this is good for the psyche.’